In this activity students are encouraged to consider how climate change could impact them personally and how changes may affect their regions. Students will analyze the roles of organisms as part of interconnected food webs, populations, communities, and ecosystems, assess survival needs and interactions between organisms and the environment, assess the requirements for sustaining healthy local ecosystems evaluate human impacts on local ecosystems.

Students will use and describe how a variety of objects provide metaphors for why climate change is occurring and the impacts resulting from it. Students will demonstrate the ability to interpret metaphors, describe the factors contributing to climate change and make connections between human behavior and environmental changes.

Students describe and explain the two hypotheses for the frequent occurrence of deep-sea corals in the vicinity of hydrocarbon seeps. Students evaluate relevant experimental data and explain how this data may support or refute these hypotheses. Students define and contrast coincidence and causality, explain the relevance of these terms to hypotheses such as those related to deep-sea corals and hydrocarbon seeps.

Students will describe the overall events that occurred during the Cambrian Explosion; explain how methane hydrates may contribute to global warming; and describe the reasoning behind hypotheses that link methane hydrates with the Cambrian explosion.

What discoveries and human benefits have resulted from exploration of the Earth’s deep oceans? Students will be able to describe at least three human benefits that have resulted from explorations of the Earth’s deep oceans. Students will be able to identify separate examples of Ocean Exploration expeditions focused on historical, biological, and physical features of the Earth’s deep oceans.

A curriculum for teachers of Grades 6-12 that takes lesson plans that were developed for NOAA Voyages of Discovery and the Ocean Explorer Web Site and presents them in a comprehensive scope and sequence through subject area categories that cut across individual expeditions.

Students learn what types of data scientists collect to monitor coral reefs, and how these data are used.

Through a case study and related activities, students learn where coral reefs are found and what conditions are necessary for their survival.

To synthesize a lesson on coral reefs, students write first person narratives as though they were reef organisms including their daily lives and the threats facing themselves and their communities.

Students will learn about how ocean temperature increase can be a cause of coral bleaching.